FREE 5th Anniversary Tasting!
Saturday June 18th, 2011
11am - 6pm (or until we run out of wine :)
Featuring charcuterie and cheese from the best Chef in CharlotteFeaturing these wines and many more!
Duval Leroy Champagne
J. Lassalle Premier Cru Champagne
2005 Ladera Howell Mountain Cabernet
2009 Caymus Cabernet
2009 Silver Oak "Twomey" Pinot Noir
2007 Culler "La Palette" Napa Cabernet
2005 Closa Batllet Priorat
2007 Amphora Zinfandel
2008 Frank Family Chardonnay
2008 Edge Cabernet
2007 Mas Doix Salanques
If the 25th anniversary is the Silver Anniversary, and the 10th Anniversary is the Tin (really, tin?) Anniversary, what is the 5th Anniversary? The Plastic Anniversary? Instead of suggesting something of great permanence and value, five years is a good but fairly common facsimile of a more valuable mark of time. It isn't so special a period; lots of businesses survive that long. Most wine stores, even those with unusual concepts like ours, last five years or so. So we have, too.
But I want to plead for a bit more respect because what is different about Winestore is that we have stayed true to our spirit and indeed (we hope) simply gotten better at it. Can you forgive this self-serving commentary? Most high-falutin' retail concepts have slowly slid from the passing lane towards the right lane by the five year mark; they might well be headed for the exits. We've tried to keep the foot firmly on the pedal: we started out with a vibrant and unusual store layout and with far fewer selections than any other store in Charlotte, and most throughout the country. We weren't trying to limit our creativity; we were trying to help customers find what was best in the market by winnowing all those selections down in advance.
Again, you must overlook a bit of self-congratulation, but the concept of smaller and more focused wine stores is now not completely unusual, although it is still more visible in New York City than any other city in the country. We think soulful Charlotte preceded slick Manhattan in this development, but New Yawkers may say different (they usually do). We wanted a store that offered clarity, value and focus to our customers, a store that was bright and cheery and that was very, very easy to read.
How different is it? Well, not to cast aspersions (now, of course, we will) most retail stores buy pretty much everything that they are offered by the big companies (whether wineries or distributors) especially when purchasing is "favorable", shall we say? If something gets a great review from one of the dominant critics (and the price seems right), they buy that too. And then if they can think of anything else ("Hey, we don't have a Vouvray". "Okay, buy one". "Which one?" "The one that's cheapest or one from whichever salesman is standing in front of you."), they fill that in. In most cases, purchasing is guided by whatever package seems most seductive to the buyer, again, at a favorable price.Like they said on Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with it. But we started with a different concept: to focus upon the very best values we could find at any time. Not to try to be all things but to be only very good things: if we don't have a Vouvray (I'm not meaning to pick on Vouvray, which I really love, but you get the idea), it's because there isn’t one right now that's an excellent wine and an excellent value. And further we built the entire store not around the usual geographic delineation (France is over here, Germany's over there and the middle of the store is all California), but upon how people actually drink. They don't want a Vouvray (at least not usually per se), they want a white wine that's crisp and minerally and light bodied and fascinating. If we don't have said Vouvray, they will probably be just as excited with a Spanish Albarino, a dry German Riesling or even a Chenin Blanc (Vouvray's grape) from South Africa.
And we laid out the entire store in that manner: light, medium, full-bodied and colorful gradations in between.
Since we have fewer selections than box stores, we have had to concentrate on knowing each and every wine inside out, on being able to let our customers taste them and compare them to other wines, and on constantly finding new and exciting values that our customers might (or probably haven't) ever seen before. Early on, we focused on Spain – today, it's cool to have lots of Spanish wines. Five years ago, we were cutting new territory. Today, we hope that we are continuing to stay in front of the trends but, of course, that's for you, dear customer, to decide.
The watchword has always been price: we thought when we opened Winestore and we continue to believe today that people shouldn't have to spend more than ten dollars to get a damn good bottle of wine. You can spend more if you want, but don't do it unless you want to. Price is critical to who we are, even if we've had to learn a bit of flexibility in what we bring into the store. About the only change we've made in our five years of robust retailing is that our customers asked us to help them find great wines, even among more expensive origins. Since our shelves are devoted to value wines, our attitude about the pricier stuff is that we should sell it as cheap as we can and as fast as we can. That's good for us, but even better for our customers, we think.
Again, it's the Fifth so I hope you will forgive this chest thumping. For me, a fifth isn't an anniversary, it something you drink from. And at Winestore, we are here first and foremost because we love to drink wine, however bad that sounds when we say it that way. WE LOVE TO DRINK WINE! Sorry, doc, just how it is. How much do we love to drink? How many wines do we taste to get this tidy, little, ever changing and (we like to believe) brilliantly succinct selection that defines Winestore, as it has for five years?
We'll plead the fifth.
As always, thank you for your business - it is our pleasure to serve you.
Cheers,
Doug Frost MS MW
Master of Wine & Master Sommelier
No comments:
Post a Comment